Stuff

There are three polls in tomorrow morning’s papers – ORB in the telephone, YouGov in the Times and a NatCen poll in the Financial Times.

YouGov for the Times has topline figures of REMAIN 42%(-2), LEAVE 44%(+1), Don’t know or Won’t vote 13%, conducted between Friday and Sunday. While Leave nudge ahead of Remain again, YouGov continue to show an extremely close race (and it confirms the narrowing of the race from the seven point Leave lead they had a week ago).

ORB’s poll is reported in the Telegraph as showing Remain “surging back into the lead” with figures of Remain 53%(+5), Leave 46%(-3). These figures are based on only those certain to vote however, and ORB have previously suggested that they regard their figures for all voters as their primary measure. On those figures the movement is in the other direction – REMAIN 49%(nc), LEAVE 47%(+3).

Thirdly there is a NatCen poll. Full details of the NatCen poll were embargoed until midnight, but Reuters have the topline figures here. Headline voting intention is REMAIN 53%, LEAVE 47% – but it’s important to note that the fieldwork is very old, conducted between May 16th and June 12th, with two thirds of the fieldwork done before May 26th.

This means the NatCen poll is of limited use in measuring current support, but is an interesting methodological experiment. The poll was conducted online by recontacting people who took the randomly sampled British Social Attitudes Survey, making it effectively a small randomly recruited online panel (people who couldn’t be contacted online were interviewed by phone instead, taking several weeks over the fieldwork to maximise response rate). Random recruitment of online panels is often suggested as a potential way forward for polling, though it’s not necessarily a panacea (in the States Pew already have a randomly recruited online panel called the American Trends Panel, but when they benchmarked it on how representative it was compared to commercial online panels recruited from volunteers and it ended up mid table).

Looking back at other polling at about the time the NatCen poll was conducted, online polls were showing an average Remain lead of about two points, telephone polls were showing an average lead of about twelve points, so the six point Remain lead is somewhere inbetween the two.

The Natcen fieldwork took place between the significant shift towards Leave we saw at the start of June, and obviously before the possible movement back towards Remain in recent days. In the Reuters article NatCen are quoted as saying that responses moved towards Leave over the fieldwork period, though it’s not possible to tell if that was changing opinions or harder to reach people being more Leave. Slightly counter-intuitively it also says that people who answered the survey online were more Remain than people who answered by phone – though that could easily be because people who couldn’t take the survey online were older or poorer.

309 Responses to “YouGov, ORB and Natcen polls”

Sorrel 2:36
“But there were a few on here who correctly forecast the 2015 election. They might have been a guess, but I would be interested in knowing the views of those people now – especially if there was a method behind their forecast.”

Interesting question. I was not one of those people. Regrettably I got the GE 2015 completely wrong, so if you wish avert your eyes now.

I would refer you to Richard’s posts of 2:40 and 2:55 am today. He cites turnout as a factor, but wonders for example if older less educated voters (leaning to Leave) will be more likely to vote as they are older, or less likely to vote as less educated people tend to be.

I tried to get some inkling from various tables of analysis, but frankly found it a little difficult. Still I think that Richard is right and that turnout is the key.

Like you I live in a Leave area, but of course I do not draw any conclusions from that.

If you want to hear a guess from one whose only claim on here is that I did guess Oldham correctly (there were no polls, but also no reasons to indicate that Michael Meacher’s successor Labour candidate would lose !) I would guess that Leave could just win it. But like someone else on here I would be delighted to hear any polling from marginal seats.

However there are just three constituencies counted in Sunderland with less than 120,000 votes in total in 2015, and 50,000 may be a random exaggeration by a returning officer from somewhere else to me!

Actually if you look at the electoral data for the three Sunderland constituencies on the Electoral Commission website (Excel vers):

This means 41.6% of the Sunderland electorate had a postal vote (compared to about 16.4% across the UK).

Of those with a postal vote 77.9% returned theie ballot paper validly, this meant that postal votes ended up being 57.5% of the votes that were counted.

Incidentally this doesn’t mean that postal votes mean that overall turnout is actually increased – it was only 56.3% in Sunderland, compared to 66.4% across the UK. What happens is that those who are more likely to vote are also more likely to have a postal vote.

[1] Effectively the number of validated papers, which included spoilt ones as you can’t tell how these were cast.

[Farming] is, however, the biggest single cause of environmental damage within the UK, by a very considerable margin. It also adds substantial costs to other sectors (such the high cost to remove nitrates from drinking water, which we all pay for through our water rates).

Indeed. But the biggest damage comes from the lower-manpower sectors sectors such as cereal, dairy and meat production. The imported labour work in the areas of agriculture and horticulture that require higher levels of manpower. So reducing dependence on them wouldn’t make a lot of difference and might even increase pollution as mechanisation led to less careful disposal etc.

Can we get back to opinion polls? This other stuff – what people reckon about the EU – a ttad wearisome. There are plenty of other spaces to let off his steam after all. @SORREL can you recall what Number Cruncher and Matt Singhs predictions were before 2015 GE. Do you have a link? Noticed in the Survation survey NI subset was 3-1 for leave – the opposite of what (little) polling there has been and other evidence and Scotland looked rather closer than any Scottish polls indicate. I know one cannot read much into subsets but if result as close as Survation and others predict than a strong remain in NI and Scotland would make quite an impact. Just a thought.

Tancred
Well tell me, How long do you think it takes to build a house let alone a town with all main services? The influx last year was I believe 360000, Now if only 1 in 4 require a home we need to build 90000 houses a year just to sand still which is 264 per day. This figure takes no account of birth rates but works out at 11 houses an hour this year alone. this figure also does not include the approximate 2 million who are at present on the social housing lists in the UK.
Mass immigration is illogical at its present rate.

TANCRED
GDP per person is still lower than it was in 2007
Mass unskilled migration increases total GDP but at the expense of living standards and wages, particularly for those at the lower end of the labour market.
There is more to life than total GDP.
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we had a financial crises, and all the economist stated this will take 10-15 years to repair.

“Now who is being laughable. The Queen is still Head of State in most of these countries, they have English as the first, or an official, language, and they have a common law system copied from, or based upon, our common law developed over hundreds of years.
We have far more in common with them – many of whose citizens fought and died on our side in WW2 – than we do with the foreign language speakers and codified civil law practitioners in mainland Europe.
With modern global instantaneous communication, geographical distances are not a problem.”

You are definitely laughable. Most educated Europeans know the English language very well and better than many native speakers in fact. The Queen is not head of state in many large and important Commonwealth countries such as India, and even in Australia this is being challenged.
We have precious little in common with the many African and Asian countries in the Commonwealth other than previous membership of the British Empire and a similar legal system. I would argue that we have a lot more in common with Europe: a shared history, religion, ethnic and cultural background, etc.
Of the Commonwealth countries only ones inhabited by many people of British origin like Australia, Canada and New Zealand can claim to be close to us, but they are a small part of the whole. Indeed, as time goes by even in these countries the British ethnic element will decline and more and more immigrants go there from Asia etc.

Your bringing up of the world wars is both disgraceful and completely irrelevant – modern Europe is very different from the first half of the 20th century. And what is your issue with civil law? Is this some kind of legal dispute between lawyers? I am saying that we are infinitely closer to Europe and Europeans than Indians, Chinese and Africans. We share a common origin, common history, common Christian culture, traditions and much else besides.

This morning I decided to predict 52 leave to 48 remain to 2 s.f.
Not as precise as your guess but interesting that we came to similar thoughts. To be perfectly honest I think I’m just being a bit too optimistic.

Anyway. I’m wondering if UKIP’s lowish results in 2015 and 2016 elections are to do with the EU referendum – perhaps people who were just using UKIP as a protest vote realised that it was actually affecting policy now, or perhaps they realised that what UKIP’s high vote was making the Tories do wasn’t what they really wanted. Maybe they’re looking until after the referendum to decide whether to return to voting UKIP or move to another party? It would go some ways to explain the lacklustre UKIP vote since their highs in 2013 and in 2014.

I think I am correct in stating that there is nothing within the treaties that would permit the EU to commence to eject a member. Article 50 is the only mechanism, and so has to be initiated by the leaving state. While the EU could refuse to commence negotiations until that notification is given to try to exert pressure, there is still plenty of scope for the UK to trawl around European capitals to commence negotiations independently before firing the official starting gun. This would be the sensible strategy.

But this strategy has two large problems attached. The first is that the electorate have voted for an exit from the EU to happen and therefore will be expecting the immediate land of milk and honey that has been promised. Being told that the Government has now decided to do nothing for an indefinite time might not go down well. And the longer that things are left the closer the next election becomes and the louder the shouts of betrayal.

The second is that ‘trawling round European capitals’ to get the best deal requires the sort of skills that Cameron (and likely successors such as Johnson) seem singularly lacking in. Apparently when you tell these foreigners what to do, they sometimes don’t oblige[1]. Who knew? (it always worked with waiters). Given Cameron’s lack of success even when trying to get an outcome that a lot of countries wanted (eg not getting Junkers in post), a much more difficult situation promises little except a large variety of different humiliations.

[1] Admittedly most of the Leave campaign seems not to know this either – see the expectations about trade deals.

Drmibbles: “Mass unskilled migration increases total GDP but at the expense of living standards and wages, particularly for those at the lower end of the labour market.”

The educational standard of EU immigrants is substantially higher than that of the UK-born population, so to describe it as “mass unskilled migration” doesn’t say much for the locals.

The impact on wages is not “particularly for those at the lower end of the labour market” but ONLY for those at the lower end of the labour market, and then limited to a few pence per hour.

This is from the FT, 12/5/16:

“A number of studies have found there is a small negative effect of migration on the wages of low-skilled workers — those with whom migrants compete most directly.

Research published last year by Sir Stephen Nickell of the Office for Budget Responsibility suggested there was a small negative effect of migration on the wages of locals in the semi-skilled and unskilled service sector — such as care workers, shop assistants, restaurant and bar workers.

Mr Portes of the NIESR thinks Sir Stephen’s research results are nevertheless small. “The impact of migration on the wages of the UK-born in this sector since 2004 has been about 1 per cent, over a period of eight years,” he says.”

Tancred
I never said that I thought we would be flooded with millions of people this is the cry aimed at UKIP who simply point out the fact that millions now have the right to come here. What I am saying is that the currant level of immigration cannot be sustained never mind the possibility of an increase due to more countries joining the EU. Anyone can see it is a logistical impossibility, its not rocket science

Being active in one of the Sunderland seats the number of postal votes and the better turn out of those voters means that we in effect run two elections. One for the postal votes, knocking on their doors first and getting individual letters to each postal voter the weekend the postal votes go out. The experience we have is that the vast majority of postal votes are returned with in 3 days of being received.

We then focus on the walk up vote wit a separate canvass and leaflets.

It’s a site for non partisan politics. I could quite easily say the 1970s were a low point in british economic history, only turned around by the brave structural reforms Thatcher introduced in the 1980s. Your lunacy, my necessity.

JOHN B
Roy
I could name you a dozen towns without shortages of housing or school places. They all happen to be in areas destroyed by Thatcher’s economic lunacy, but I suppose such places don’t count.

Jasper22: “Europe is our neighbour but the Commonwealth is our family.”

That’s what we used to tell them. Until lots starting exercising their right as family members to come and live here. At which point (well pre-EU) we decided they weren’t family members after all.

As David Carrod has pointed out, the Commonwealth comprises “some 53 sovereign states, and 2.1 billion people, roughly a third of the world population.” Are you advocating that as “family” they should all be able to come here? If not, it’s a funny sort of family.

Anyway, in purely economic terms, it’s a non-starter. We export more to Ireland than to all Commonwealth countries put together.

Wonderful post and spot on as always, which begs the questions:
What have the outers published as their plan/timetable post an out vote? What have the inners done to confirm or otherwise the feasibility of those plans?

As an expat I suppose I have assumed that this topic would have been included in the “official” in & out leaflets, but even if that was the case I’m surprised it doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in any of the media coverage I have heard or seen.

I have cousins in Australia and Canada; most of my neighbours have family in the States, Canada, Australia and/or New Zealand. That’s par for the course in Scotland.

But my wife is Italian – and I am not alone in the UK in having a spouse from another EU country. That makes Italy ‘family’ as well. And I have close friends in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, cousins of my wife in the Netherlands, and so on. Your point about ‘family’ may have been valid fifty years ago but it is certainly not so now!

A single market would still be a single market even without the free movement aspect. You can create something you call “The Single Market” (TM) and make free movement part of the definition (as the EU has done) but that doesn’t mean that all of the benefits of coordinated regulation and tariff-free access can’t be had without free movement.

How can the Outers publish a timetable? They’re not a political party. They’re not in power. They don’t even have a uniform view as to what they would like to see an independent UK do. Anything they published would be pretty meaningless, just a set of ideas as to what might happen and when.

Where is the joint Cameron/Corbyn/Farron/Sturgeon plan for what the UK will do if we vote Remain?

But if the EU says that, in order to get a good deal with them their understanding of ‘a free market’ has to be accepted, what then?

I’m also rather concerned that so much of ‘the UK can go it alone’ idea is based on the UK economy being the fifth largest in the world. How much of our economy is based (especiallly the financial services) on the ability of London to have free access to the EU? Would ‘Brexit’ cause a reduction in the City’s ability to trade with the the EU? And if so, would that impact on the size of the UK’s economy?
Just asking……..

Of course. All I’m saying is that it is a choice by the EU, not an inevitability. It is portrayed as some sort of scientific fact, like we were asking Mauritania to become a ski resort.

As for the UK economy shrinking. Perhaps. I don’t really agree with the rosy picture Vote Leave portrays. I pretty much accept that there will be significant shrinkage of our economy in the event of Brexit, and that this will hurt. I think the higher estimates are scare-mongering, but I certainly think the cost will more than wipe out the infamous “£350 million a week”.

But then again, who knows. We currently have tariff regimes with some large economies that could potentially be reduced outside the EU, with increases in trade volumes resulting. There’s no guarantee, it’s a real gamble, but it’s by no means certain that it will be all pain and no gain economically. And people are mocked for “not believing the experts” as if this made them some sort of flat-earthers. But in the light of the ERM rejection and the unpredicted (other than by Gillian Tett and one or two others) global crash, it’s not all that hillbilly a thing to believe.

“[Jo] was a politician and she had very strong political views and I believe she was killed because of those views. I think she died because of them, and she would want to stand up for those in death as much as she did in life.

“I think she was very worried that the language was coarsening, that people were being driven to take more extreme positions, that people didn’t work with each other as individuals and on issues, it was all much too tribal and unthinking.

“And she was particularly worried – we talked about this regularly – particularly worried about the direction of, not just in the UK but globally, the direction of politics at the moment, particularly around creating division and playing on people’s worst fears rather than their best instincts. So we talked about that a lot and it was something that worried her.”

So, anyone feel like having a go at Brendan Cox for campaigning inappropriately?

No, thought not. His dignity in the face of such a (to him) personal tragedy is remarkable.

@somerjohn – the impacts on wages are one issue, but one other that has had much less attention is the impact on rents. The largest buy to let landlord in the UK told Patrick Collinson of the Guardian that he makes his money from eastern Europeans, as there is an endless market for his properties.

I’m also troubled by many of the studies on wages and migration. Some (like the LSE one recently published) are utter tripe, in statistical terms, while others are more rigorous.

However, they all suffer from the problem that they are drawing assumptions on what would happen if there wasn’t migration, without ever being able to actually test this. The main methodology seems to be one of comparing areas with high and low migration, but I’m not sure that this is a solid methodology, as wage pressures aren’t so easily contained.

Also, as I’ve said before, many of the arguments in favour of migration (that is increases demand, for example) are valid, but reversible – ie it means positive effects of migration here must be causing negative effects elsewhere.

My complaint about migration within the EU is that it should be viewed as a symptom of failure. We need to be developing poorer regions, and dealing with the push factors as much as anything else. Simply going for free movement hands business everything they want and overall may be having a detrimental impact on the EU as a whole.

“we had a financial crises, and all the economist stated this will take 10-15 years to repair.”

Total GDP is higher than in 2007, GDP per person is not. The reason for that is a significant population increase.

So while total GDP has rised and the economy has recovered, living standards have not. That is entirely due to unskilled economic migration providing the illusion of economic gains, but gains which are only seen in the headline rate of GDP.

I read the article. Reading between the lines I think Mr Cox believes he lost his wife because of her stand on refugees, and the virulent reaction it produces in certain segments of the community.

I am involved in a refugee support group, and there is a Facebook group in my part of the world that is very hostile to it’s work. We keep an eye on it for anything threatening or illegal, so I’ve seen some of the bile he’s referring to.

Of course, the people on it are mostly pro-Brexit but that’s not really their main motivator. It’s mainly hostility to Islam, to be honest.

“A single market would still be a single market even without the free movement aspect. You can create something you call “The Single Market” (TM) and make free movement part of the definition (as the EU has done) but that doesn’t mean that all of the benefits of coordinated regulation and tariff-free access can’t be had without free movement.”

True, but the current rules insist of free movement on labour, and we can’t change rules that need to be agreed by all other members. Leaving the EU will not solve anything except create chaos for everyone.

Direct trade with the EU is 8% of our economy.
The absolute worst that can happen is a 10% either way tariff, as per WTO rules, which would cost the EU more than it costs us, as we run a trade deficit.
The idea that we’re not going to trade with the EU outside of the single market is ludicrous!

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Sadly your conclusions are wrong.

The direct trade does not represent how this income is spent in the UK, and reinvested.

The way this money this money circulates within the economy, is much much bigger than 8%

It would represent job losses in the region of up to 300,000, @ least 100,000 jobs in the car industry, aero industry etc.

Believe in what you want, but please do not try to be reckless, in trying to convince others with the other peoples jobs.

Financial markets, and the betting market believe that remain will win. The polling says it will be close. If the polling is right and it is close, it seems that some people will not be satisfied. A clear result would be better.

Some people, including some posters, have very strong views, and the mind boggles. Suppose a couple with strong views wanted a divorce and a referendum decided narrowly that they had to stay together for the next forty years.

The state of the opinion polls before there was any idea of having a referendum showed that there was not strong opinion one way or the other on Britain’s membership of the EU. For that reason, I think that it was a mistake to hold the referendum. To make such a fundamental change on the basis of a small difference between yes or no seems ridiculous. It is like a couple wanting a divorce for very little reason.

To take an example, to call a strike there are proposals that a certain turnout must be achieved. In the event of a low turnout, the validity of the decision to call a strike can be questioned. Those who do not vote are presumed to vote against the strike under the legislation. Are people really worked up about the dispute? Do they want to take decisive action? Do they think it is a storm in a teacup?

I believe that remain will win, for one thing, because the financial markets say so. There are some people who feel strongly about the EU, but for most people, it is not something uppermost in their minds, therefore why change, why vote to leave?

“Leaving the EU may well solve some things, although it certainly will cause chaos as well. Chaos is sometimes what is needed though. And I say that as an instinctively cautious and reactionary person.”

Maybe so, but I resent people making decision which will affect MY livelihood, MY pension and MY future. Many people voting leave are over 60 and have lived their life, but not me!! What gives you the right to wreck the future of others just to satisfy your desire to get back at ‘them’?

“Some people, including some posters, have very strong views, and the mind boggles. Suppose a couple with strong views wanted a divorce and a referendum decided narrowly that they had to stay together for the next forty years.”

Then it could be 1642 all over again. Polish up your pikes and load your muskets.

“The state of the opinion polls before there was any idea of having a referendum showed that there was not strong opinion one way or the other on Britain’s membership of the EU. For that reason, I think that it was a mistake to hold the referendum. To make such a fundamental change on the basis of a small difference between yes or no seems ridiculous. It is like a couple wanting a divorce for very little reason.”

Agreed – this is why a leave result in the referendum should not be valid unless (1) there is also a leave majority in parliament OR (2) the leave camp win by at least 66.6%. At the very least, a majority for leave should not count unless over 50% of the total electorate (not just the turnout) vote leave. Any other result should keep the status quo.

“Maybe so, but I resent people making decision which will affect MY livelihood, MY pension and MY future. Many people voting leave are over 60 and have lived their life, but not me!! What gives you the right to wreck the future of others just to satisfy your desire to get back at ‘them’?”

This cuts both ways. My ‘children’ (age 33 and 35) were asked at the start of all this to do their own independent research, and come up with a decision on which way to vote.

They both separately came to the conclusion that, on balance, Leave was the better option for them and the grandchildren.

We are supporting them by voting the same way, and I could equally say what gives Remainers the right to make what we consider to be ‘wrong’ decision which will affect their future?

“Maybe so, but I resent people making decision which will affect MY livelihood, MY pension and MY future. Many people voting leave are over 60 and have lived their life, but not me!! What gives you the right to wreck the future of others just to satisfy your desire to get back at ‘them’?”

I am 76 and I am voting leave. I am doing so in the firm belief that if we leave my children and grandchildren will have a better future. Many of the people I know are also voting leave and are doing so for similar reasons. We are citizens of the UK and have as much right as you have to vote, since we have registered to do so.